Twitter Scouting Sites in Sacramento

December 15th, 2010 : Rich Miller

What’s the latest on Twitter’s data center expansion? The company’s not saying. But we’re hearing that Twitter has been scouting data center space in Sacramento, Calif. What does that mean for Twitter’s announced plans to open a new facility in Salt Lake City? It’s not entirely clear.

Rich Miller tried to ask more.

Opening “Later This Year”? In July Twitter said that its new facility would be located in Salt Lake City and open “later this year.” With 2010 drawing to a close, we touched base with Twitter spokesman Matt Graves and asked whether the Salt Lake City data center project was on schedule, or whether the expansion had been postponed or shifted to another location. “We’re still not commenting on our data center,” Graves wrote in an email.

That’s consistent with Twitter’s practice with most data center inquiries. So we don’t know for certain whether the company’s interest in Sacramento represents an additional expansion, or a rethinking of its announced plans.

The Data Center World is so small it is hard to keep secrets. A little bird told me four months ago that Twitter was looking at Sacramento and the reasons we speculated on the possible reasons for change. Given it has been over 4 months I would expect Twitter has already made its decisions by now even though there is now a whole lot of activity base on DataCenterKnowledge breaking the news.

One thing we'll probably never know for sure is whether the 100% coal power in SLC part of what scared Twitter to look at other locations.